1
Lecture at The Augustana Institute at the Lutheran Theological Seminary,
Philadelphia, March 22, 2014 by Bishop Emeritus, Dr Jonas Jonson.
Archbishop Nathan Söderblom:
Ambassador for Peace and Christian Unity
Nathan Söderblom (1866–1931) was born in a pastor’s family at Trönö in northern Sweden, studied
theology in Uppsala and served as pastor to the Swedish congregation in Paris 1894–1901. He defended
his doctoral thesis on ancient Persian religion at the Protestant faculty of the Sorbonne, and was
appointed professor of ”Theological Propaedeutics and Theological Encyclopedia” at the Uppsala
university in 1901. For two years he also taught History of Religion in Leipzig, Germany, before he was
elected Archbishop in the Church of Sweden in 1914. In 1925 he organized the Universal Christian
Conference on Life and Work in Stockholm. In 1930 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Price. When he died
in 1931, he was known as the outstanding leader of world Protestantism, sometimes referred to as ”the
pope of the North”. He was married to Anna Forsell. Together they had twelve children, ten of them
surviving him.1
1.
On November 10th 1923, the Luther Society in Philadelphia gave a banquet in honor of
Archbishop Nathan Söderblom. He was on a tour in the USA at the invitation of the
Augustana Synod and the Church Peace Union. Having inaugurated new buildings at
Augustana College in Rock Island and celebrated the heroic defender of the Reformation
King Gustaf II Adolf with the students on November 6th, Söderblom proceeded to
Detroit, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Philadelphia. Everywhere he was preaching, speaking
and lecturing. During his ten weeks in America, he spoke publicly no less than 120 times,
“two months with a voice, one without” as he put it. In New York and San Francisco,
Chicago and Minneapolis, churches were crowded. Lecture halls at Berkeley, Harvard,
Johns Hopkins and Yale were filled by attentive students as he addressed fundamental
issues in the history of Religion. He was received as the celebrity he was, and his visit
was concluded with a meeting with President Coolidge in the White House.2
1
The most recent biography telling Söderblom’s life story is Jonas Jonson, ”Jag är bara Nathan Söderblom,
satt till tjänst”. En berättelse om vilja och förtröstan att göra det omöjliga. Verbum förlag, Stockholm 2014.
2 Nathan Söderblom, Från Upsala till Rock Island. En predikofärd i Nya världen, Stockholm 1924, contains
most of the sermons, lectures and talks given in the USA, as well as his personal impressions and
memories.
2
He took every opportunity to plant his vision for world peace and Christian
unity. The American Lutheran churches had not been very responsive to any interdenominational initiatives, and in 1908 they had resolved to stay outside the Federal
Council of the Churches of Christ in America. In Europe, Lutherans had formed their own
confessional organization. The German Allgemeine Evangelish-Lutherische Konferenz
gradually had included both Scandinavian and American participants and was gaining
influence, but Söderblom had not felt particularly welcome. In spite of his conservative
and pietistic backgrund, his reputation as a Luther scholar and his position as
archbishop of the biggest of all Lutheran churches, the AELK and its successor the
Lutheran World Convention were inclined to write him off as being too “liberal” and too
“catholic” at the same time.
This was Söderblom’s dilemma. From the depth of his heart he believed
that Luther’s experience and interpretation of justification was God’s gift and revelation
to Christianity as a whole. Lutheran churches therefore had an invaluable contribution
to make through the emerging ecumenical movement and they would balance the AngloSaxon dominance. But instead of confidently participating, they tended to keep their
treasure to themselves. Many Lutheran churches were loaded with dogmatic orthodoxy,
pietistic quietism, and what we today would label fundamentalism. The onslaught of
modern theology with its historical-critical reading of the Bible, had reinforced the
confessionalistic Lutheran attitude. For Söderblom, who was organizing his Life & Work
conference to be held in Stockholm in 1925, it was of highest priority to get the Lutheran
churches onboard. Therefore he had chosen to travel to America under the auspices of
the Augustana Synod rather than the Federal Council.
He had spent the post-war years strategically building inter-church
relationships. He created a “block” of Lutheran churches around the Baltic Sea. Through
massive and imaginative efforts to bring relief to the German people who were suffering
from mass starvation because of the post-war blockade and by participating in a number
of Lutheran church assemblies, he had won the grateful confidence of both the new
German government and of the Landeskirchen who were pragmatically republican but
monarchical in heart. He had continued developing a number of close personal contacts
in the Church of England. But suddenly in February 1923, it looked as though his patient
diplomacy was all wrecked. The Swedish bishops had made a sharp appeal addressed to
the French government but particularly to President Warren Harding that the French
3
occupation of Ruhr must come to an end. It was a plea made in the hope that the United
States would change its isolationist policy, a concern which Söderblom shared with
Reinhold Niebuhr.3 The reaction in France was very strong: President Poincaré sent a
six-page telegram to Söderblom defending the French action, and relations with the
Federation of Protestant Churches in France were interrupted for a year. In Germany, on
the other hand, Söderblom was much praised, and consequently he was accused of being
decidedly pro-German. There is no evidence that his appeal hade any lasting effect on
political authorities in the United States. Thus it was that his 1925 conference hung by a
thread.
Söderblom went to America in the midst of the turbulence that his appeal
had caused. His mission was not only to encourage the Federal Council and the Church
Peace Union, who was already fully involved with his conference, but to convince the
American Lutheran churches to participate. This was his agenda also when he met with
the Luther Society of this city. He delivered a lecture on the universal significance of
Luther while his audience leaned back and enjoyed an after dinner smoke.4 Again he was
successful: at Uppsala in 1925 both the United Lutheran Church and the Augustana
Synod were represented at the highest level.
2.
Söderblom had already served as Archbishop for nine years when he arrived here. He
had been elected to his office by an extremely narrow margin without a single vote from
his fellow bishops to be, and hardly any from the clergy of his diocese. But as the
Archbishop’s office was combined with the office of vice chancellor at the university,
professors also had a say. It was the faculties of arts and science who eventually paved
his way. The fact that he was appointed was, one would say, “a providential accident”. At
the time when it happened, he was serving as professor of History of Religion at the
University of Leipzig in Germany. In the same week that World War I began he returned
3
Wolfram Weisse, ””Irenic Mediator for Unity – Partisan Advocate for Truth. Nathan Söderblom’s
Initiatives for Peace and Justice”. Svenska kyrkans forskningsråd: Tro och Tanke 1993:7, Uppsala, pp.15 –
42.
4 While in Philadelphia he also preached at Gloria Dei on ”The eternal life”, at Holy Communion Church on
”Our vocation as Lutherans” and on ”Worship in solitude”. He spoke at the Gustavus Adolphus church on
”The evangelical heritage of the Swedish people”, and addressed the American section of Life & Work on
”The urgent task of the Church today”. He lectured at the University of Pennsylvania on Buddhist and
Christian temptation stories, and addressed the conference of the World Alliance for Promoting
International Friendship through the Churches. He also visited the old Swedish churches along the
Delaware River. All in four days!
4
to Uppsala. He barely made it on trains overcrowded with cheerful young soldiers on
their way to battle. Among them were some of his most gifted students who would be
dead within weeks.
Söderblom was internationally widely known as a scholar of religion. He
had earned his doctorate at the Sorbonne and had taught as professor at Uppsala since
1901. History of Religion was a comparatively new field of study, and with his
phenomenological approach he had gained a great academic reputation. In his lifetime
he was awarded no less than fourteen honorary doctorates, and he concluded his
academic career by delivering the prestigious Gifford lectures at Edinburgh just before
he died in 1931.5
Becoming an archbishop, his life took a new turn, which he experienced as
God’s direct and personal call. In the early 20th century, the idea was widely spread that
individual personalities – explorers, scientists, political and religious leaders, artists, and
even successful businessmen – were chosen to lead the progress of humanity.
Söderblom shared this personalistic understanding of history, and he often referred to
great personalities as geniuses or even saints. There is no doubt that he regarded his
providential election as a confirmation that he himself was chosen for a particular
ministry of reconciliation, unity and peace. He was determined to make full use of his
position as archbishop to fulfill this vocation at a momentous time. For this purpose he
did not hesitate to inflate the archiepiscopal see of Uppsala in the eyes of the world and
put it on par with Canterbury and even with Constantinople and Rome. His consecration
on November 8th 1914 – just one hundred years ago – was planned as a magnificent
ecumenical manifestation, but the war prevented most foreigners from attending. The
Augustana Synod, however, was represented at the occasion, and Söderblom made it a
special point to have Dr L. G. Abrahamson as the only non-Swedish assistant participate
in the laying on of hands.
Nine years later Söderblom had established himself as the most
charismatic, open minded and energetic archbishop the Church of Sweden had had since
the Reformation. But he remained controversial, theologically and politically. He was, no
doubt, a genuine liberal theologian in the line of Albrecht Ritschl, and in addition a
5
Eric J. Sharpe, Nathan Söderblom and the Study of Religion. The University of North Carolina Press 1990.
The most reliable and thorough intellectual biography of Söderblom in recent years is Dietz Lange, Nathan
Söderblom und seine Zeit, Göttingen 2011. This book rendered the author an honorary degree of theology
at Uppsala in 2014.
5
person highly committed to social justice. His opponents would look at him not only as a
self-indulgent heretic, but as a kind of a socialist using his platform for opinion-making
and social change. He was indeed sympathetic with the labor movement, but his social
thought had not been shaped by Marxist socialism. He was, rather, influenced by
Christian social movements in the USA, France and Germany during the 1890s.
Somewhat paradoxically, he received most of his moral and financial support for
ecumenical ventures not from the churches but from the old landed aristocracy and new
industrialists who had accumulated much wealth from export to war ridden countries of
Europe.
Söderblom was a rich and complex character, deeply spiritual, a mystic and
an activist at the same time, ascetic and extravagant, an actor with close friends among
artists and authors, a first class musician and a master of rethoric. He possessed an
unforgettably resonant voice, which both attracted and in the end captivated his
hearers. His speaking, preaching and lecturing were irradiated with joy and hope, and
occasionally he would spontaneously start singing in the midst of a talk as he did to a
large audience upon his arrival in New York. But there was also another side. His
brilliant gifts were held together by a strong will and a demanding discipline, at times
characterized as “inhuman”. He was very fond of the metaphor of race-horse and rider to
express his ideal: “The good horse can achieve its highest capacity and its greatest speed
only under the firm hand of the rider. So it is with the soul. Only under the firm hand and
the strict bridle of God can the soul be encouraged to give its best”. Considering
Söderblom’s simple background as the son of a rural pastor, he moved with remarkable
confidence and disarming humility and humor among all kinds of people, be they
peasants, academics, statesmen or royalty. After seven years in Paris, his French was
perfect. His German was flawless and his English good enough to arouse admiration. He
gladly used Latin, daily read his Greek New Testament, and when consecrating Baltic
bishops he addressed them in Estonian or Latvian. Nobody doubted his extraordinary
intellectual capability, but he was more admired for his work capacity. To him time
seemed to have no limits. His dense program on his tour in the US is sufficient to prove
the point, even more so as he had been down with a heart attack not long before.
His ecumenical vision was shaped early, through the Student Missionary
Association at the University of Uppsala in the 1880s and more particularly at a student
conference at Northfield, Massachusetts in the summer of 1890. He arrived there as a
6
“born again” Christian, was profoundly impressed by Dwight L. Moody and Ira Sankey,
and made friends with John R. Mott and Winfred Monod, who thirty years later would
become his close collaborators. In New England he first encountered the kind of
energetic Anglo-Saxon supranational Christendom, out of which the modern ecumenical
movement sprang. At a meeting with Newman Smyth, who later wrote the important
book Passing Protestantism and Coming Catholicism, he jotted down a prayer, which
guided him through his life: “Lord, give me humility and wisdom to serve the great cause
of the free unity of Thy Church”.
3.
When he took on leadership in the ecumenical movement, he was well prepared. He had
lived in France, visited Britain often, and taught in Germany. He was part of an
impressive network of personal relations; his correspondence was already voluminous.
In 1909 he negotiated an agreement with the Church of England on inter-communion
and this had influenced his ecclesiology. In 1911 he spent a couple of weeks in Rome and
Athens on his way to a conference in Constantinople of the World Student Christian
Federation. For the first time he experienced the living liturgy of the Roman Catholic and
Orthodox churches. Gradually, his ecumenical vision and vocation matured.
Experiencing first hand how the war disrupted Christian culture and overnight turned
brothers into enemies, he felt compelled to act. He mobilized all his perseverance,
diplomatic skill and social competence to make European and American Christians meet
and rebuild confidence. The worst obstacle was the enmity and mutual accusations that
prevailed between the French and the Germans -- unless the Germans admitted their
guilt for the war, the French would not see them face to face. With the unfair treaty of
Versailles under the auspices of President Wilson, the situation grew worse. It was
Söderblom’s greatest diplomatic achievement that he succeeded in bringing the enemies
together in Stockholm 1925. A year later they were prepared to leave la Schuldfrage (as
it was called) behind.
Already before his consecration, at his own initiative, had prepared an
appeal for peace to be distributed among church leaders all over the western world with
the hope that they would sign. The words flowed out of his troubled heart: “The War is
causing untold distress. Christ’s Body, the Church, suffers and mourns. Mankind in its
need cries out: O Lord, how long?” He could not but remind “especially our Christian
7
brethren of various nations that war cannot sunder the bond of internal union that
Christ holds in us” and call upon God that “he may destroy hate and enmity, and in
mercy ordain peace for us”. He secured the signatures of Dr. Charles MacFarland and
Professor Shailer Mathews on behalf of the Federal Council, and also of church leaders in
the Netherlands, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries. To his disappointment
churchmen in the belligerent countries refused to put their names to the document. Only
a few months into the war, the national war frenzy, to which preachers had made no
small contribution from pulpit and rostrum, already ruled out any church cooperation
for peace. Söderblom was filled with affection for France, Germany and England. He had
personal friends on both sides of the trenches. And at the heart of his faith was the cross
of Christ, and he was deeply convinced that reconciliation with God and the unity of the
church were conditional for peace. Therefore he pursued with almost superhuman
patience and energy his attempts to make Christians defy hostility and seek unit. While
fulfilling his many episcopal duties in the large Uppsala Diocese and in the Church of
Sweden, he made one attempt after the other to reach out to churches with an invitation
to meet and to cooperate for the sake of peace. But only after the war was he able to get
the process started which led up to the Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work
in Stockholm 1925.6
4.
Söderblom´s goal, strategy and tactics developed as he moved along. He pragmatically
adapted himself to the rapidly changing political situation, but he never lost his focus on
furthering peace by uniting the churches and strengthening international law and
arbitration. His theological presumptions remained the same. The first was that God is a
living God, revealing himself through prophets, historical events, and in all authentic
religion, and acting through individual persons who put their lives at God’s disposal. The
second was that the church as a “body” or an organization may take a multitude of forms,
but that the “spirit” is one and the same. The unity of the universal church is a unity in
spirit, and a unity in diversity. Söderblom consistently rejected uniformity in doctrine
6
The outstanding study of Söderblom’s ecumenical journey is Bengt Sundkler, Nathan Söderblom. His Life
and Work. Uppsala 1968. Nils Karlström, Kristna samförståndssträvanden under världskriget 1914 – 1918,
Stockholm 1947, is an impressive and detailed study of Söderblom’s contribution. This dissertation is
summarized in Ruth Rouse and Stephen Neill, eds., A History of the cumenical Movement 1517 – 1948,
Geneva 1953, pp. 509 – 542. See also Wolfram Weisse, Praktisches Christentum und Reich Gottes: Die
ökumenische Bewegung ”Life and Work” 1919 – 1937. Göttingen 1991.
8
and ministry as an ecumenical goal; he respected the individuality of each church as it
was shaped by cultural circumstances. He was suspicious of incarnational theology as it
easily could lead to institutionalism. The third presupposition was that all churches
equally share in the catholicity of the one and holy and apostolic church. There was
Orthodox catholicity, Roman catholicity and an Evangelical catholicity. No church had
the right to claim to be more catholic than others and to pretend to be normative.
For Söderblom, the episcopal ministry was both a sign and an instrument of
such catholicity, and he spared no efforts to have episcopacy reintroduced where it had
been lost. He saw to it that it was introduced in the Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church
in India. He ordained bishops in Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia and also made an effort to
convince Kaiser Wilhelm II personally to have German superintendents ordained as
bishops. What mattered to Söderblom was that bishops represented an unbroken
continuity with the undivided church; his ecclesiology was shaped by his sense of
history. To him the Reformation was exactly what the word says, not an interruption,
but a renewal of the living tradition. As a child he had worshipped in the unaltered 14th
Century church of Trönö, and he maintained a somewhat romantic understanding of
medieval times. In the weeks before his appointment, he made a qualified study in
liturgical history on the consecration of the first Archbishop of Uppsala, Stephen, in
1164. He had developed his thinking on evangelical catholicity when encountering the
Church of England and was of the opinion that his own church had preserved its
integrity in relation to the state and its continuity with the past even better than had the
Anglicans. This made the Church of Sweden suitable to serve as a “bridge church”
between traditions. But he never made apostolic succession a condition for communion,
nor did he regard evangelical catholicity as a liturgical program.
Reflecting on his own ministry, he would describe it by using the image of
five concentric circles: his primary responsibility was his diocese, then the national
Church of Sweden, thirdly Lutherans of Swedish descent in other countries, then other
Lutherans, and finally the universal church. His visit with the Augustana Synod thus
turned into a kind of episcopal visitation, and at the end of his tour he presented a
number of suggestions as to how the relations between Augustana and the Episcopal
Church should be organized. He would certainly have welcomed Augustana confirming
its Swedish roots by ordaining bishops in the Swedish tradition. Söderblom did in fact
participate in the laying on of hands when Gustaf Brandelle was installed as president of
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the Synod, but Brandelle did not regard this as a consecration, nor did he ever use the
pectoral cross which was later presented to him by the Swedish bishops.
At a conference in Uppsala in 1917 with participants from the neutral
countries, Söderblom formulated a conception of unity, which was later to be adopted by
the Life and Work movement:
When our Christian confession speaks of one Holy Catholic Church, it
reminds us of that deep inner unity that all Christians possess in Christ and
in the work of His Spirit in spite of all national and denominational
differences. Without ingratitude or unfaithfulness to those special gifts in
Christian experience and conception, which each community had obtained
from the God of history, this Unity, which in the deepest sense is to be found
at the Cross of Christ, ought to be realized in life and proclamation better
than hitherto.7
The centre of unity is the cross of Christ, which transcends all earthly differences. The
diversity of Christian traditions should not be obscured but should rather shine forth
through the unity. That Christian unity “ought to be realized in life” not only constitutes
the guiding principle for all of Söderblom’s further ecumenical efforts, but also qualifies
what is meant by “evangelical catholicity”.
At a time when Scandinavian and German Lutherans generally held church
and nation identical, Söderblom – in spite of his love for Sweden and its particular
history – consistently emphasized universality as the prime characteristic of the church.
His mission was not to create unity between national churches, but to make the real but
invisible unity of the universal church visible. If Christians worked together for the
common good of humanity, their unity in faith would be revealed to the world and made
real to themselves. He respected Faith and Order, but could not afford time to wrestle
with dogmatic and liturgical problems when the world was in such disorder. His
participation at Lausanne in 1927 was a failure. He was a man of action and exceedingly
liberal in doctrinal matters. Truth was for him grounded not on dogmas but in personal
experience. He had himself encountered the living God in a decisive moment of
conversion, a direct experience of God’s holiness; since then trust and confidence were
the characteristics of his seemingly unshakable faith.
7
Karlström 1947, p. 203; Bengt Sundkler, Nathan Söderblom. His Life and Work. Uppsala 1968, p. 203.
10
5.
Söderblom lived at a time when world Christendom was thoroughly transformed by
external and internal forces. Empires disintegrated, monarchies gave way to republics,
German state churches became independent, and Russian Orthodoxy faced severe
persecution. At the same time Christianity expanded rapidly in other continents and
American denominationalism became the ecclesiological novelty. But faith itself was
severely challenged by science and secular ideologies, and not least by the loss of
credibility as “Christian” nations fought their devastating war. In an exceptional way, the
Churches of Sweden and England were able to make their transition into modernity with
structures comparatively intact. Uppsala and Canterbury therefore felt a particular
responsibility as agents for peace and unity.
Already in 1908, the Church of Sweden hade been invited to send an
observer to the Lambeth Conference. In 1888 the ”Lambeth Quadrilateral” had been
approved with four conditions for the re-union of churches. Since the Church of Sweden
fullfilled all of those conditions, including the one on the historic episcopate, there had
already been certain initiatives to establish formal relations.8 When the invitation to the
Lambeth conference arrived, Söderblom – who at the time was a young professor –
immediately grabbed the opportunity. In consultation with the Swedish archbishop, he
secured the governmental approval required for official relations between the two state
churches and arranged for a respected bishop with good command of English to be sent
to the conference. He was well received. A few weeks later Söderblom himself went to
England, met with the Archbishop of Canterbury Randall Davidson and a number of
other bishops to make sure that a formal interchurch dialogue would be established.
Already in 1909 an Anglican delegation arrived in Uppsala for – as far as I know – the
first official ecumenical dialogue ever. As a result the Church of England fully recognized
the episcopal order of the Church of Sweden, and in 1920 inter-communion was
established, confirmed by the Swedish bishops two years later.
At the conversations, the American Episcopal Church was also present,
represented by Bishop G. Mott Williams of Marquette and the priest Gustaf
Hammarskjöld, who was of Swedish decent. This caused a real problem. In the States the
Swedish – Anglican contacts were not welcomed since the Augustana Synod feared that
8
Lars Österlin, Churches of northern Europe in profile: a thousand years of Anglo-Nordic relations.
Canterbury 1995.
11
a rapprochement would strengthen American Episcopalian efforts to enlist Swedish
immigrants. Söderblom had friends among Augustana’s leaders and was aware of the
problem. Therefore he resolutely excluded Hammarskjöld from the negotiations and
turned down Bishop Mott’s plea for Episcopal care of Swedish immigrants. With
determination he defended the integrity of Augustana as “the Swedish church” in the
USA. When he was visiting here fourteen years later the question of Episcopal –
Augustana relations was raised again. Söderblom handled it with caution, but suggested
that a couple of 17th century Swedish church buildings now in the hands of the Episcopal
Church might be used by the Swedes. In a sermon at the Cathedral of St John the Divine
in New York City he expressed the hope that the two churches would recognize each
other and develop as good relations as had the Church of Sweden and the Church of
England.9
Between the First and the Second Vatican Councils, the Roman Catholic
Church was guided by reactionary ultramontanism. The popes had built a fortress
against both liberal democracy and all forms of socialism. In the 1890s, Söderblom had
come to know a number of catholic “modernists” in France who were condemned by the
church, prevented from teaching, and in some cases excommunicated. The most
influential among them was Albert Loisy. In 1910 Söderblom had published a most
significant study on Roman Catholic modernism, which regrettably was never
translated.10 Adding his immediate experience of ecclesiastical oppression and the
limiting of intellectual freedom in the Catholic Church to his anti-institutional
ecclesiology, it is not surprising that Söderblom often expressed a strong anti-Roman
sentiment. This did not, however, prevent him from making every effort to invite the
Roman Catholic Church to his conferences or to be touched by authentic Catholic
spirituality. Participating in Holy Week services in Rome, he had a deep sense of what
today is called “spiritual ecumenism”. The only answer he received to his invitations,
however, was the unambigious non possumus. In 1928 the encyclical Mortalium animos
charged the ecumenical movement with theological relativism and forbid Catholics to
have anything to do with ecumenism. Only at the end of Söderblom’s life did he get the
9
Söderblom 1924, p. 368.
Nathan Söderblom, Religionsproblemet inom katolicism och protestantism. Stockholm 1910.
10
12
opportunity to enter into a serious dialogue with a Jesuit scholar, Max Pribilla, on the
conditions for Christian unity.11
At his visit to Constantinople in 1911, Söderblom purposely began to build
relations with Orthodox Churches. His personal friendship with Metropolitan Germanos
of Thyatira proved decisive for the Orthodox participation in the ecumenical movement.
During the war, Söderblom maintained contact with the churches in the Balkans, Greece,
Constantinople, Egypt and Russia through Swedish diplomats and relief workers, and he
exerted a certain influence on the famous patriarchal encyclical of 1919, which prepared
the way for the vulnerable Byzantine church to involve itself with the ecumenical
movement.12 Including the Orthodox was not looked at with approval by most
Protestant leaders, but it was essential for Canterbury. To achieve his goal, Söderblom at
a planning conference in Geneva in 1920 – in his unpredictable manner – staged an
appearance of several Orthodox bishops. The Protestants were taken by complete
surprise and accepted the enlargement of their venture.
6.
The Stockholm conference in 1925 was the fulfillment of Söderblom’s dreams and the
incomparable event of his life. With more than 600 delegates, including a large number
of Orthodox headed by Patriarch Photios of Alexandria, it was the most representative
gathering of Christians since the ecumenical council of Nicaea 1600 years before. It was
Söderblom’s affair altogether – one could say the conference was an extension of his
personality. The program was overloaded, the actual results meager, and burning
problems were swept under the carpet. Still it was a healing experience after a decade of
strife and destruction, a new beginning. There was energy and vision, prayer and
personal encounters, pomp and circumstance and a great hospitality in beautiful August
weather. The expenses were mostly covered by Swedish donors. Among the stewards
was a young man, Dag Hammarskjöld, for whom Söderblom was a mentor and a close
family friend. Nothing like this meeting had ever happened before; participants could
not find words for their emotion and inspiration. Used to thousands of big conventions
11
Nathan Söderblom, ”Pater Max Pribilla und die ökumenische Bewegung. Einige Randbemerkungen”.
Kyrkohistorisk Årsskrift 1931, pp 1 – 99; Pater Max Pribilla, ”Drei Grundfragen der ökumenische
Bewegung”. Kyrkohistorisk Årsskrift 1931, pp. 113 – 127. Uppsala.
12 George Tsetsis, ”Nathan Söderblom and the Orthodox Church”, Tro & Tanke 1993:7, Uppsala, pp.89 –
102.
13
and international conferences as we now are, we can hardly imagine what Stockholm
was like. The universal church was gathered in all its exotic diversity. The world press
was there, and Söderblom’s call for justice, peace and unity was amplified all over. In his
own analysis of the conference, he concluded that the very fact that they all had met was
the most significant achievement.13 The ecumenical movement, however limited in size,
had begun to move.
In spite of recurring health problems and an overload of responsibilities at
home, the post-Stockholm years were filled with international assignments. Söderblom
had become the great European of his time. He was invited to speak and to preach at all
kinds of events all around Europe. The ecumenical council which he had aimed at since
1919, was formed only in 1930 and the World Council of Churches which he had
foreseen was constituted in 1948. As his liberal theology was overrun by history, and
systematic theologians like Gustaf Aulén and Karl Barth set a new tone, the ecumenical
movement took a new course, but Söderblom was not forgotten. At a time when
Christian values were compromised and Christian civilization was on the brink of
complete bankruptcy, like an Old Testament prophet he reminded the churches of their
calling, and like his admired saints St. Augustine, Jeanne d’Arch, Gustavus Adolphus and
first and foremost Martin Luther he revealed the will, mercy and righteousness of God.
His recognition of God’s revelation in all authentic religion, his consistent adherence to
principles of justice, his promotion of binding international law, and his trust in a living
God, continue to challenge world Christendom.
Nathan Söderblom died a sudden but saintly death on July 8, 1931. Time
and again, in many languages, he had repreated: “A saint is one who in his or her life
shows that God lives.” Was he not one of them?
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His own 950 page report Kristenhetens möte i Stockholm was published already in 1926.
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